Oliver Haslam·

iOS 15 Completely Removes Saved Photos After iMessage Thread Is Deleted And iCloud Backup Performed

Apple’s iOS 15 release has had its fair share of problems with bugs appearing left and right. That’s to be expected during the beta process, but some of those bugs have popped up since its public release.

One of those bugs could see people lose photos, which is obviously a bad situation to be in.

The issue appears to be one that relates to photos that have been received and saved via iMessage. The problem appears when someone deletes the iMessage thread, proceeding to perform an iCloud backup following which the photo is then deleted, too.

The bug itself is easy to reproduce, too, according to MacRumors.

  1. Save a photo from a Messages conversation to your Camera Roll.
  2. Check to see that the photo has been saved.
  3. Delete the Messages conversation the photo came from. The photo will still be in your ‌iCloud Photo Library‌ at this point.
  4. Perform an ‌iCloud‌ Backup, and the photo disappears.

The fact this issue is still present in the latest iOS 15.1 beta 2 release is troubling and it would suggest that Apple’s unaware of the issue or, more worryingly, is unable to fix it easily.

https://twitter.com/superezfe/status/1443196471160066050

For now, we’d suggest that people avoid deleting iMessage conversations until Apple fixes this bug for good. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later and before people lose important photos.

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